Where to go, and what to wear when you're there.

Effects loop

Summer in rural America, a wish-you-were-here postcard framing a county fair. My recent foray reintroduced rollercoasters into my life. And now this, a same-same-but-different scene of gravity (and culture) defiance from France: “Stellar,” a public art piece by Baptiste Debombourg in Nantes. The sculpture, part of the citywide Le Voyage à Nantes festival, will remain on view in the central Place du Bouffay through August 20.

Dually inspired by the outdoor cafes ringing the Place du Bouffay and Robert Delaunay’s artwork for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, Debombourg has laced 1,200 café chairs into an elaborate coaster of two ellipses that rise up, meet and separate (a dance echoed in the folds of this MSGM dress). Channeling the sociability of the outdoor patio, he approached each chair as a person, looping rebelliously in aerial play, woven into place yet gracefully defiant of its laws. Such is summer.